


The Moon and the Tides

by QuixoticMage



Series: The Tides Sequence [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Aqua POV, BAMF Aqua, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, Princess of Heart Luna Lovegood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuixoticMage/pseuds/QuixoticMage
Summary: Deep in the Realm of Darkness Aqua discovers the other side of the Veil housed within the Department of Mysteries.  When Luna falls through the Veil in place of Sirius, Aqua dares hope her new friend represents a means of escape.  An old and terribly personal foe stands in her way, and even if she triumphs the wizarding world holds its own darkness.  Still, with Luna beside her, Aqua is more than willing to face the worlds outside the Realm of Darkness, and the Death Eaters have never faced anyone quite like a keyblade master.Or: The one in which Voldemort gets smacked in the face with a keyblade.
Relationships: Aqua (Kingdom Hearts) & Luna Lovegood, Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter
Series: The Tides Sequence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856935
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Posting daily until complete

The Realm of Darkness was, well, dark. Not pitch black, as one might expect. There was darkness in the Realm of Light, so it was only fitting that there was light in the Realm of Darkness. Besides, without the light there could be no shadows, and it was the writhing yellow-eyed shadows who called this place home.

Aqua wished she could find some comfort in the light, dim as it was, but it was source-less and warmth-less, illuminating far less than it felt like it should. She walked in a claustrophobic spotlight that revealed her to her surroundings without enlightening her in the least. She was tempted to send up a mage-light for a better view of her environs, but she knew from long experience that its dim flickering would only sharpens the shadows’ claws.

So she walked. There was no hunger or thirst, or any other need in that place, and in her darker moments she regretted that fact, regretted that even a clean death was denied her. She could give in, of course, and let the darkness take her, but that was a loss she was not willing to accept. Not yet. She did not regret the circumstances that had brought her to this realm, did not regret choosing to save Terra’s life over her own, and that gave her the strength to keep walking.

And keep fighting. 

Aqua’s keyblade, Master’s Defender, was not heavy in her hand. Rather, she had held it and used it for so long that she could not honestly remember what her arm felt like without that weight. She was not sure she could unclench her hand from its hilt, and she was sure that she dared not find out.

Even as that thought crossed her mind a shadow sprung from the ground, its claws scything for her throat. She slashed through it without breaking stride or giving it a second thought. Isolated shadows were no threat to her, not anymore. It was when they came in packs, with greater numbers and variety, that she began to wonder if her time had finally run out.

Grey sand gave way to firm stone underfoot. Aqua found herself standing at the top of a great circular pit. Row upon row of stone benches ran around the sides, descending like an amphitheater to the bottom. At the floor, some twenty feet below, was a raised stone dais. Standing on the center of the dais was a stone archway. It was old, warped, and cracked, but gave off a feeling of permanence nonetheless, as if any force sent its way would simply slide sideways and disappear.

The structure, such as it was, was the first artificial thing Aqua had seen in the Realm of Darkness that had not come from a fallen world. As a sign of civilization, it should have been encouraging, but there was something profoundly wrong about it. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end in response to the twisted energy that permeated every inch of the amphitheater. Whatever magic had made this place, she wanted no part of it.

Still, there was no other path, and she refused to retrace her steps. Slowly, cautiously, Aqua descended past the stone benches, until she stood below the dais at the bottom. Now that she was closer she could see a gauzy veil was hung across the archway and fluttered in a nonexistent breeze.

It both drew and repelled her at once. The barest hint of light seemed to glimmer in its depths, and yet the whole area stank of a darkness even deeper than the one through which she’d trod. Aqua couldn’t find a way to decide if that faint dream of light was worth trying to brave the cold darkness she felt emanating from the very stones.

As she stood and thought, she felt a light drawing closer through the veil. Long since having learned to distrust even the light, Aqua readied her keyblade and dropped into her battle stance. 

A figure shot from the veil and crashed heavily to the ground below the dais. Aqua blinked. Whatever she had been expecting, that had not been it. She walked forward, keyblade held between herself and the still figure.

It was a girl, a few years younger than herself, with dirty-blonde hair and dressed in a long black robe. She was gasping for breath, and cuts and scrapes covered every inch of her that Aqua could see. Before she could think better of it Aqua knelt at her side.

“Curaga!” she cast, raising her keyblade over the girl. The familiar green and pale yellow flower formed over the girl. Aqua felt a curious resistance to its execution, as if some force were trying to prevent her from casting the healing spell. She redoubled her focus, pouring her strength and her will to kindness into the girl. At last, she felt a barrier give way and the green healing light washed over the trembling form.

The girl’s breathing slowed, and Aqua watched with satisfaction as the cuts on the girl’s hands and face closed up.

“Easy now,” she said, helping the girl into a sitting position. “You’ll be alright.”

The girl turned her face to meet Aqua’s concerned gaze. Aqua recoiled from the light that emanated from the girl’s eyes, memories of too many shadows to count flashing to her mind. But no, the light was silver, not yellow, warm, not hungry, and even as a resigned and wounded expression crossed the girl’s face, Aqua forced herself forward again to hold the girl even more tightly.

“You’re okay,” she repeated firmly. “I’m Aqua. What’s your name?”

“Aqua?” She blinked. “I’m Luna. Luna Lovegood. We were – we were in the ministry. And Harry!” Her already wide eyes grew even wider and she struggled to stand. “I have to go.”

Aqua lent her shoulder to the effort, and together they managed to bring Luna to her feet. She wobbled unsteadily back and forth for a moment, and Aqua hurried to support her.

“Slowly. You’ve been hurt, and coming here can only make things worse.” 

Luna ignored her and tried to climb back up to the arch. Aqua noted the length of wood she desperately clutched in her left hand as she scrabbled at the chest high dais. It took two tries but Luna managed to pull herself onto her hands and knees on the raised platform. She stayed there for a moment, panting, and Aqua took the opportunity to jump up onto the dais next to her.

“Please slow down. Who is Harry? And where did you come from?” Aqua asked.

Luna shook her head, her thin arms trembling from the effort of holding her up. “Harry is Harry, and I fell through the veil. I have to go back or something even worse than nargles will get him. I have to help my almost-friends.”

“Almost-friends?”

“They’re fighting my certainly-enemies,” Luna said. “Can you help me up so I can get back to them?”

Aqua began to fear that the only company she’d had in quite a while was a few munny short of a full pouch. Still, any company that didn’t want to claw her heart out was an improvement. Besides, she knew a thing or two about doing stupid things in the name of friendship.

Reaching down, she once more helped Luna to her feet. Aqua supported the smaller girl with an arm underneath her shoulders, and she could feel just how slight the girl truly was. Clearly Luna was no warrior. She didn’t have the muscles that came from swinging a keyblade around for years on end. Though, as Aqua had long since learned, there were other ways to fight.

Before they could make it any closer to the archway, Aqua heard the telltale scrape of claws against the stone.

“Heartless!” she cried out, spinning her keyblade around to hold it between Luna and the approaching shadows. She watched with trepidation as the two dimensional shadows slithered down the benches from all sides in greater numbers than she’d seen for quite a while. 

“Can you defend yourself?” she asked Luna in an undertone, not taking her eyes off the threat.

In answer, Luna raised that stick in her left hand and pointed it at an oncoming shadow. “Reducto,” she called and a jagged blue beam shot from the stick – no – _wand_ and reduced a section of the stone to a smoking crater. Aqua felt the tingle of magic on her skin, not quite the same type as what she used, but close enough that it felt familiar. More, she could feel the power the other girl had put into the spell and she regarded her with a newfound respect. Unfortunately, the shadow at which Luna had been aiming scuttled up out of the crater, apparently unharmed. 

“Not bad,” Aqua said. “But they can’t be hurt until they pop up to attack. And there will be many so don’t spend too much magic on any one shot.”

“Like the skizzy moles – only there when you’re not expecting them,” Luna murmured, half to herself.

A part of Aqua wanted to ask exactly what a skizzy mole was, but on the whole she thought that particular question could wait. “I’ll need my arm back for this. Keep your back to the arch, and try and hit any of them that sneak up behind me. Can you do that?” 

Aqua could feel the other girl trembling as she slowly withdrew her support. Despite that, her wand was steady as she leveled it at the heartless, and the silver light of her eyes was undimmed. “I don’t like them,” Luna said. “I usually love strange creatures, but when I look at them they just feel wrong.”

“They are wrong,” Aqua said. “They were never truly alive, and they only can exist by stealing and devouring hearts. You don’t need to hold back.”

Luna’s expression firmed and she stood up a little straighter. “No, I don’t think I will.”

With one last look at the girl beside her, Aqua turned and threw herself into the fray. A wave of shadows rose before her, far more than she usually had to deal with at one time.

“Thundaga!” 

With a cry she brought down lightning and charred the ground in a wide circle around her target. The heartless twitched in place. Aqua followed up with wide swings of her keyblade striking as many heartless as she could reach with each blow.

Each swing found its mark and the shadows puffed out of existence one after the other. She could hear shouts from behind her, and the tingle of magic and flashes of color from the corner of her eye told her that Luna was fighting just fine.

Still they came on, and Aqua groaned as a fresh wave of shadows crested the edges of the top row of stone benches. She groaned again to see flame cores like hovering pots of fire bobbling above the shadows’ heads.

“I hate those things,” she muttered, and readied her guard for the wave of fireballs that always followed in the flame core’s wake. Before the fire could reach her, she heard a shout from Luna.

“Aguamenti!” A great stream of water blasted past her shoulder and sizzled its way through the fireballs and through the flame cores themselves. Aqua felt no small bit of vindictive pleasure at seeing the annoying heartless smashed to the ground and dissolved under the forceful stream.

Glancing back, Aqua saw Luna firing the stream from her wand with her left hand and guiding it with her upraised right. “Nice job, Luna. If you can keep the flame cores off me, I’ll take care of the shadows.” Luna nodded in response, but her focus did not waver from the spell she was casting.

Aqua renewed her own focus on the combat in front of her. Shadows and their larger cousins, the spiky neoshadows, were sent flying with each vicious strike she dealt. She cartwheeled around their strikes and snuck blasts of fire and blizzard in between strikes. No more thunder though, she dared not use it with all the water Luna was casting around.

One shadow lunged at her face and her keyblade rose across her face and slid the claw over her left ear. She ducked down and slashed horizontally through the shadow. 

_One,_ she thought.

A jet of red light splashed behind her and knocked down another shadow before it could sink its claws into her back. Staying low, she lunged forward and skewered another shadow.

_Two_

Aqua took advantage of her bent legs to leap into the air and she hung there as she swung her keyblade through a floating water core. The first slash disrupted the flowing water which made up its body, the second disrupted it entirely and sent it splashing to the dusty ground.

_Three_

Aqua let a glimmer of anticipation flicker in her eyes as she felt her magic welling up within her. The three solid strikes she’d landed had unlocked her magic. As her feet touched the hard stone she stretched her arms wide. Three pairs of silver orbs connected by double helixes of glowing thread burst into the air. They flashed across the battlefield, spiraling up into the air. Each heartless they struck burst dissolved into thin air.

Dropping back into a fighting crouch, Aqua dared hope that she had put a dent in the oncoming hordes of heartless. Her heart sank as she raised her eyes to the top row of stone benches and saw the heartless pouring over the edge in endless numbers.

Forcing her voice to remain calm, she called back to Luna, “Can you get back through the veil? I’ll hold them off while you do.”

There wasn’t an answer, and Aqua chanced a look back over her shoulder. Luna was staring at her with a thoughtful expression.

“They’re shadows,” Luna said thoughtfully. “Do they not like the light?”

“They feed on it.” With a quick x-slash she cut through another two of the interminable shadows. “But too much of it at once burns them right up.”

“Just like dementors. I wonder…” Luna raised her wand almost tentatively, as if curious whether or not her thought would pan out. The magic gathering in the little witch burned against Aqua’s skin like the sun she scarcely remembered.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

Luna’s voice came with a resonance that belied her small frame. A brilliant light blazed out of her wand, forming into the shape of an ethereal rabbit. Luna’s wand twirled around and the rabbit followed it, leaving a glowing trail behind.

At the slightest touch from the rabbit the heartless simply burst into smoke. The rabbit soared across the battlefield and it left empty stone in its wake. Frowning in furious concentration, Luna sent the rabbit crisscrossing row after row of benches. 

It did not move like Aqua’s magic, all straight lines and sharp edges. It leaped and bounded across the arena, hopping like a true rabbit from heartless to heartless. Where it went the heartless simply were not. It brought light to a place that had not known light since before the sundering of the worlds.

In seconds the rabbit had cleared out the depression around the veil, and it manned the top like a royal guard pacing back and forth on his patrol route. From the rising puffs of smoke, Aqua knew the additional waves of heartless were fruitlessly crashing themselves to death on the outside.

At last, after what seemed like an eternity, no more smoke rose from where the rabbit hopped along the top of the depression. It turned, observing Aqua almost like a living thing, and then dove straight for her. 

Aqua was afraid. She had been in the Realm of Darkness for so long. Who was to say that she hadn’t been infected by enough darkness for this conjured spirit of light to harm her? Yet she could not bring herself to dodge; that would have been nothing more than a confession of guilt, and an ember of hope that she still belonged to the light nestled in her heart.

She need not have worried.

Where once there had been an ember, for a brief moment a bonfire roared. The barest sense of the magic had been like the touch of the sun, to feel it pass through her directly was like nothing so much as a standing on the sun-drenched beach of that one shining world. Hope burned within and in the face of it there could be no doubt that she’d return to the Realm of Light one day.

Then the moment passed. The rabbit left her and hopped up to Luna before fading away. Almost, Aqua wished that it had not touched her. She had learned to live in the absence of hope, and to have it returned and taken so suddenly made the darkness seem all the more unbearable.

No, that wasn’t true. She wasn’t so far gone that she would prefer the dark to the light, however brief. Its absence ached terribly though. But then, it was not truly gone, not entirely. She was not alone anymore.

Aqua looked up and found Luna on the ground once more, though at least she was sitting up this time, spent from all the magic she’d performed. A quick leap brought her to the girl’s side.

“That was a beautiful spell,” Aqua said. 

“Harry taught me that,” Luna said, a note of tenderness warming her tone. “It keeps away dementors, creatures in my world very like your heartless, I think.”

Aqua blinked. “There are others that can use that spell? It felt like the pure hearts of princesses I once knew, but they had a light that couldn’t be taught.”

Luna hummed thoughtfully. “There are a few others, but Harry taught all the ones I know, and I don’t think Harry is a princess. I know I’m just a Lovegood.”

Lovegood. There were two ways for Aqua to parse that name. One possible interpretation was that it referred to someone who loved that which was good. The other was that it meant a person who was good at loving others. Considering what she had seen of Luna’s concern for her friends, not to mention her contributions to their own fight, Aqua suspect either interpretation fit just fine.

“You’re not ‘just’ anything. And I’d be proud to be an almost-friend of yours.” Aqua offered a hand to the sitting girl.

A wide smile lit up Luna’s face. “I’d like that very much.” She took Aqua’s hand and pulled herself to her feet.

As their hands touched, Aqua felt a warm glow rise within her, one she’d not felt in quite some time. Before, when she’d been out in the Realm of Light and made a friend, she’d been able to draw on her connection to that friend for strength. It seemed that making friends with Luna had formed that same connection: a dimension-link.

“What a curious feeling,” Luna said. Without letting go of Aqua’s hand, she raised her wand and looked at it curiously. “My wand is warm and I rather feel like I could cast you as a spell.”

Aqua almost laughed. “You probably could. We’re linked now. You can call on my magic when you need it, and I can call on yours. Don’t do it now, though. Your magic is already bright enough to bring the heartless swarming. I’d hate to see what is called when you use our link.”

Privately, Aqua wondered if she was worried that her magic would make brighten Luna’s magic further until the heartless were called in unstoppable hordes, or if she was worried to learn that, despite what the patronus has felt like, the darkness had infected her and all a link to her could bring Luna was darkness.

“They’ll be coming back?” Luna asked, her tone colored by fear. “I can’t fight them again. I have to get home.”

Aqua nodded. “Right, let’s see if we can get you back through the arch.”

Still holding hands – it had been so long since she’d had any human contact and Luna seemed to take comfort in it too – Aqua led the other girl along the dais. As she neared the arch, she felt a familiar presence she had come to loathe.

_Just let go of everything and fade into darkness._

Sure enough, there in the center of the arch floated a large oval mirror. It’s ornate gold frame and red gemstones were beautiful, but Aqua hated it as she hated nothing else in her life, other than Xehanort. Through their linked hands she felt Luna shiver.

“I don’t like that mirror,” she said. “It feels wrong. Cold and wrong.”

_No one can save you. And no one wants to._

“Do you hear the voice?”

“No, but…” Luna shivered again and drew closer to Aqua, almost pressed up against her side. “I’m remembering things I don’t want to. My mother…” She took a deep breath. “But if I have to go through it to get back to Harry then that’s what I’ll do.”

“I’m not sure yet just what we have to do. Give me a moment to look it over.” Aqua forced herself to turn and face the mirror head on.

_Are you really worthy of being a Keyblade Master?_

“I’ll prove I am,” Aqua muttered defiantly. She focused on the well of magic deep within her and drew it forth. She tapped the tip of her keyblade to the mirror and sent her power rushing through, prying through every nook and cranny of the structure before her.

There was a keyhole. Thanks to her keyblade she knew instantly that it could be opened. It was not meant to be unlocked, certainly not from this side, but no lock could hold fast against a keyblade. Again, she sent her power forth, trying to fit key to lock and open the way.

_You’ll never see the Realm of Light again_

It was no good. The arch could be opened, but the mirror could not. And so long as the mirror stood the way through was barred.

Truth be told, Aqua had expected that. She knew the mirror and how it worked. She had to enter the mirror and defeat the poison-whispering phantom version of herself, just as she had several times before. 

One might think that the repetition of the task would inspire confidence in her, but instead the opposite was true. Far from gaining confidence Aqua was losing it. After each encounter the phantom seemed to grow stronger, its words more biting, and her own resolve was chipped away. Here in the Realm of Darkness with nothing to restore her light, she could only clash with her own shadow so many times before she was worn away.

“You don’t belong in this place,” Luna said suddenly, and Aqua jumped in surprise at the sudden noise.

Luna was looking at her with a strange intensity, and the light from her silver eyes seemed to pierce straight into Aqua’s heart. It hurt more than she wanted to admit, to be seen so clearly by someone so bright. It hurt, too, to know that she once would not have even noticed or felt the light in the girl’s gaze, because there had been nothing in her to be hurt by it.

It helped, though. It helped remind her that she had a friend to fight for now.

_Your bonds of friendship only tie you down._

The phantom’s voice spoke again, but it rang false this time and Luna’s voice drowned it out.

“It’s dim and cold and still, here. And you are bright and warm and colorful. You looked like you were forgetting that, so I thought I’d remind you.”

Aqua met her gaze. It still hurt, but she knew better than to shy away. “Thank you. I did need to hear that. And I promise that I will get you home.”

“And you’ll come with me.” Once again, it was a statement, not a question. “I don’t think you should stay with the heartless.” Luna tapped her chin with her free hand. “They’re not very nice if you ask me.”

A smile, small and painful and stretching her mouth in ways it was no longer used to, but a smile nonetheless, fought its way onto Aqua’s face. “No, they aren’t very nice. Now, here’s what we need to do to get out of here. We’re going to walk into the mirror. Once inside, I will defeat someone who looks like me. You will stay to the side, keep your guard up, and don’t interfere. After I win, I’ll be able to use my keyblade to unlock the arch, and then we’ll be out. Sound good?”

“Why can’t I fight with you?” Luna asked.

Aqua hesitated. “It’s just a hunch, but I think if you were to fight, then we’d have to fight a version of you as well. I’ve fought myself before and won. I can do it again.” She tried to inject confidence into her voice and she must have succeeded because Luna nodded in agreement.

“Alright, through the looking glass then.” Luna gave a secret smile. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Holding hands and drawing strength from one another, they stepped through the mirror.


	2. Chapter 2

Aqua hated the space within the mirror. She hated the pale teal and black flames that walled in the oval arena, and she hated the variegated silver floor which reflected the flames like a scratched mirror laid on its side. It was a place as alien as the Realm of Darkness, but intensely personal and all the more terrible for it.

The phantom waited for her.

It was clad in her clothing, in her _skin,_ and it took up her stance and held her keyblade. Only the eyes, the same blue but too flat and cold to ever belong to her (she hoped), gave away that it was a different being.

“Put your back to the wall,” Aqua muttered to Luna. “Even if it looks like flame, it won’t burn you. And if you’ve got any defensive magic, keep it ready.”

The girl looked as if she wanted to say something else. Her gaze drifted to the other Aqua and then back, but she shut her mouth and did as Aqua had said. 

Now it was just the two of them. They began to circle one another, walking slow and watching for an opening.

The phantom made the first move, disappearing in a flash of purple hexagons, only to flash into existence much closer and already lunging forward.

Aqua parried the blow and leaped into the air before spiraling down to slash the phantom. She shouted as she landed blow after blow, finishing with her swirling orbs of magic. There was a certain joy that came from watching the phantom stagger under her blows.

She stopped to catch her breath, and the phantom stood straight, apparently uninjured from her strikes. It disappeared again and Aqua only barely caught sight of the flashing hexagons coming from her right. She blocked, but tendrils of crimson writhed about the attacking keyblade and snuck through her guard.

She grunted, falling back under the assault. Flash, purple, flash, red, and pain through it all.

At last there was a break in the phantom’s attack. Aqua cartwheeled away, and got off a quick curaga. As the soothing green light washed away her pain, she spun slowly in place, watching for the attack she knew was coming.

A flash, and it was in her face. Her own eyes glared at her as it swung its keyblade down. She parried to the side and dodged around, looking for an opening. It teleported behind her and she was forced to dodge away again.

It was even stronger this time, Aqua realized. Its attacks came faster and her own barely fazed it. She could handle the opening passes, but when it started to use its more formidable abilities Aqua wasn’t sure how she was going to cope.

A blow that she should have dodged brought her sharply out of her thoughts. It hit solidly in her stomach and she doubled over gasping for breath. Follow up attacks rained down on her shoulders and she couldn’t find a moment to get away or guard.

In the midst of the attack Aqua heard a sound that made her blood run cold: the hiss and chime of an activating command style. Her command style: Spellweaver. Her healing magic hadn’t yet recovered and she was already on her last legs. This was going to be tricky.

The phantom cloned itself, three copies, covered in crackling purple energy shot spheres of pure magic at her. She cartwheeled through them, feeling them singe her skin as they passed by. She just caught the clones appearing again on her right and she desperately threw herself into another cartwheel, only just escaping death.

There was a pause. The phantom and its clones were nowhere to be seen, waiting to attack when her back was turned or her guard was down. If her healing magic had returned she would have used it then, but the phantom had forced her into using it before this attack, likely for this very reason. 

A wave of clones struck, key blades spinning in from the left and the right. No longer even thinking, Aqua just reacted, dodging, twirling, and blocking until the world seemed to spin around her. Four clones of the phantom struck from all sides and Aqua raised her shield bubble just in time.

They flashed away into a circle surrounding her. A flicker of red at the ends of their keyblades told her not to block this time. She leaped into the air as spheres of magic crashed into where she had just stood.

The clones followed her and she couldn’t get her guard back up in time. They twirled their blades in front of themselves and crashed together in two interlocking lines, with her caught in the middle. Hard metal struck her face once, twice.

A line of them appeared like a firing squad, and Aqua took the full brunt of red tinged spheres blasting through her. She fell. Not a controlled fall but a flailing descent. Below she saw four phantoms beginning the final move of that command style. They spun, gathering whips of energy around them and she was falling right into the center of them all.

That was not an attack she could take.

Though her body ached and her blood pounded in her ears, Aqua forced herself upright in the air. She gathered her strength and, just as she was about to land on the giant ice field that formed between them, she pulled on her magic and threw up the strongest guard she could.

It couldn’t protect her entirely. She simply didn’t have the strength for that. Energy seared her skin, and ice pounded bruises into her body. But she lived, if only just.

Aqua panted as she knelt on the ground, and the one trembling hand on her keyblade was the only thing propping her up. It wasn’t enough. _She_ wasn’t enough. The phantom, once more a single entity, slowly walked towards her.

_Is there any point in continuing this fight?_

Monotone as always, but Aqua swore she heard a smug satisfaction in its voice. It was right though. She didn’t have anything in her to make the fight worth continuing.

“Aqua!”

Luna’s voice cut through her exhaustion. She just managed to turn her head and look over to where Luna stood. The other girl was against the edge of the arena, as instructed, but she had her wand up and pointed at the phantom.

“I know you said it would be bad if I interfered,” Luna said, speaking quickly as if afraid the phantom would strike before she finished. “If you want to change your mind, I’m right here.”

Should she let Luna help? No, Aqua knew the magic of that place too well. Right now the magic was ignoring Luna, but if she launched an attack it wouldn’t even have time to land before a phantom Luna would appear to block it. That phantom would be as strong as the phantom Aqua she had just lost to, and that did not bode well for their chances.

However, there was another way for Aqua to draw on Luna for aid. She should have thought of it earlier, but then it had been so very long since she’d been able to count on help from anyone else.

“No. Luna, stay where you are. You’ve already helped me enough,” Aqua insisted.

Aqua forced herself to her feet. She clenched her star-shaped wayfinder close in her left hand and held it over her heart. Reaching inside, she pulled on the glow inside her that felt like Luna.

For just a moment the world darkened even as a circle of bright silver light formed around her feet. She felt the tingle of Luna’s magic sweeping over her, healing her injuries and lending her a new and exciting form of strength. Aqua had always loved magic, and now she had a chance to try out an entirely new form of it. She thought back to the words Luna had used for her spells.

“Reducto!” Aqua called out, pointing her keyblade at the phantom.

A jagged bolt of blue light shot from her keyblade and smashed the phantom backward. It tumbled end over end, and the sight brought joy to Aqua’s heart. Before it could recover she dashed after the phantom and brought her keyblade down in two quick slashes. 

“Reducto!” she called again, and the blue slight smashed the phantom back against the edge of their arena.

Luna’s magic felt good within her, felt right. She could feel it actively lending itself to her, pushing the words for other spells forward so she could use it even more freely.

“Aguamenti” she said, and a fierce stream of water pinned her phantom against the wall. She followed it up with a blizzaga spell from her magic and watched in satisfaction as the phantom froze solid. She might have been able to end it with a straight strike there, but she finally had the upper hand and she was determined to make the phantom pay for each blow it had dealt her.

Aqua smashed her key blade through the ice, shattering it and sending the phantom’s form crumbling to the ground. With an upward swipe of her keyblade she pinned it against the wall with the tip of her weapon against its chest.

“Reducto,” she growled, casting the spell at point blank range. With nowhere to go the phantom’s body crunched against the wall with a sickening thud. But it wasn’t enough, not after what it had done to her.

“Reducto!” She growled again. “Reducto, reducto, reducto!” 

The phantom jerked from the repeated blows. Blood trickled down from her own blue hair. She hadn’t known it could bleed. When she’d beaten it previously it had simply dissolved after taking enough damage. She thought she might like this better, though the red clashed horribly with her stolen blue hair and eyes.

Just that trace of red wasn’t enough to satisfy her.

Aqua let the phantom slump to the ground. She took a pace back and felt another spell welling up from Luna’s magic. One that she thought might just satisfy her hate at last.

Slowly, Aqua let her keyblade drop until it pointed directly at the phantom’s slumped head. She spoke the words Luna’s magic gave her.

_“Avada_ – “

“No!” Without warning, Luna barreled into her and knocked her keyblade aside. Aqua stumbled to the side and looked down at the little witch in confusion. Luna clung tightly to her and looked up with earnest eyes. “Not that spell,” she said. “You shouldn’t cast that spell. You’re better than that.”

Aqua’s eyes fell to the end of her keyblade, where the magic pulsed, just waiting to be released. It was a sickly green, one that seemed intrinsically wrong, as though it’s mere existence was an affront to the world.

It was also shot through with veins of darkness.

_Only your heart is hollow enough to be a demon’s._

The phantom’s eyes met hers and she saw, behind the cold they always carried, satisfaction. It had planned this, Aqua realized. It had made itself able bleed and let itself be injured because in the pleasure of her victory she was letting the darkness in.

That realization brought with it anger, and she almost - _almost_ lifted her keyblade and let the spell complete.

As if sensing the temptation, Luna put her hand on Aqua’s keyblade, holding it down. “Please Aqua, don’t give in. You’ve won. Let that be enough.”

She had won.

It was unbelievable, but clearly the phantom was in no shape to fight. And the phantom had been the only thing standing between her and the unlocking the arch to open a pathway out of the Realm of Darkness. The only possible thing that could go wrong would be if she herself fell to darkness right at that moment.

To hell with that.

Aqua snorted. She had not spent ten years trudging drearily across the realm, fighting off the encroaching infectious darkness at every turn, just to fall at the very threshold of her return to the light. 

She placed a gentle hand on Luna’s shoulder and pushed her back.

“Thank you, Luna. I lost myself for a moment there. But it’s alright now, see?” With a simple shake, the swirling green and black spell dissipated. A casual swipe of her keyblade, and like a mirage the phantom dissolved in a swirl of smoke and red lights. “We’re going to get out of here.”

Luna smiled. “Thank _you,_ Aqua, for doing what you did, and not doing what you didn’t.”

Even as she spoke the mirror reappeared, hanging in the air before the two of them. Once more, holding hands, they stepped through.

***

They reemerged in the pit they had left. Behind them the mirror cracked just as the others had done after Aqua defeated the other phantoms. Then the cracks spread even further, and the mirror and frame both dissolved into nothingness.

The arch was left bare.

Or not quite bare. Aqua could again see the wavering Veil which fluttered in the space the mirror had occupied. It was the Veil, so far as she could tell, that was the link between the Realm of Darkness and Luna’s world. It was closed for the moment, but she had the answer for that. 

She would anyway, once she’d had a chance to rest. With a groan, Aqua sank down to a sitting position. The rush of power from her link with Luna had faded, and the aches and pains from her beating at the hands of the phantom were layered atop the pains from years of unending combat.

“What was happening on the other side of the arch, Luna? What do I need to be ready for?” Aqua asked.

“We were fighting,” Luna said solemnly. “Harry thought he had to rescue someone, but it was a trick by You Know Who and his Death Eaters ambushed us.”

“I don’t actually know who, but I can’t imagine getting along with the boss of a group called the Death Eaters’.” Aqua sighed and stretched her arms up to the pitch black sky. “The battles never seem to end. So we go through and defeat these Death Eaters and their boss, whom you know and I do not.”

Luna shook her head rapidly. “No, no, no. Don’t try to fight You Don’t Know Who. Only Dumbledore is his equal in magic. Though I suppose Harry has faced him a few times and gotten away alive,” she added, almost as an afterthought, and a smile warmed her face as she spoke.

“You’ve mentioned this Harry quite a bit,” Aqua said gently. “Is he someone precious to you?”

“Oh yes.” Luna sighed and took a seat next to Aqua, their backs to the Arch. “He was kind to me, and when we all worked together he treated me the way he would have treated anyone else. I can be a bit odd, you know, but he never held that against me. Much like you haven’t,” she added, turning those backlit silver eyes on Aqua, “so thank you for that.”

“Luna, I can count the number of flesh and blood people I have spoken to in the past decade on one hand,” Aqua said frankly. “It’s a pleasure just to speak with you.” Luna’s eyes had reminded her that they didn’t have much time to recover. The light the girl gave off would bring down more heartless, and Aqua needed her focus to open the way through the arch.

With a groan, Aqua summoned her keyblade and levered herself to her feet. She reached into a pocket and brought out a small orb with intricate golden scrollwork.

“What’s that?” Luna asked, peering curiously at the small item.

“It’s called a megalixir,” Aqua said. She twisted the halves of the sphere and it came apart in her hands, revealing a glowing green liquid inside. “It makes you feel as if you’ve had a full night’s sleep and good meal. Sounds like we’ve got a battle waiting on the other side, so let’s make sure we’re as ready as can be.”

Luna nodded and accepted her half of the item. Hesitantly, she leaned in and sniffed at the liquid, then hummed thoughtfully. “Pine. And a mountain spring in winter. No, wait, it’s just toothpaste. Oh, well.” She tipped her hemisphere back and swallowed the green liquid in one gulp, then smacked her lips together. “Minty.”

Aqua rolled her eyes, and drank the item down without tasting it using skills born of long experience. At once, she felt energy flow through her veins. Not the sudden rush of incoming power that had come from the link. Instead, she felt trembling muscles firm and the wellspring of magic within her heart was refilled, rather than merely supplemented by foreign power.

All in all, Aqua felt better, aside from a brief moment of regret at the use of an exceptionally rare resource. She cracked her knuckles and brought her keyblade up. “Right, time to open the way out and go rescue your Harry.”

Luna tapped her lip thoughtfully and repeated, “my Harry. I don’t think he’s my Harry, but it is a fun thing to say, isn’t it? My Harry. Right then, let’s go get him.”

Aqua smiled, and it felt just a little bit more natural than it had the previous time, as if her face was slowly remembering the muscles for happiness. “You’re one of a kind Luna. Regardless of how this goes, I’m glad I met you.”

She raised her keyblade and saluted Luna with it, then turned and plunged it deep into the Veil. Her mind sunk into the challenge it represented.

The veil was like no other lock she had ever encountered. In most cases the keyblade alone was enough to unlock the way. Only for the most challenging of locks, gates between worlds, or palaces sealed by the gods for instance, did she have to apply her mind to the process. In those cases, that application was enough, like leaning one’s shoulder into a stuck door, they quickly opened even as she examined them.

When her mind delved the Veil, it found a labyrinth. Every push on her part was shunted aside, down some other avenue. The keyblade could not find enough purchase in the Veil to perform its function. 

Aqua began to grow frustrated. She threw herself and her keyblade at the Veil, trying through sheer force of will to overcome this barrier, to no avail. There was a lock, somewhere, and she held a key, but she couldn’t bring the two together. 

Tears of frustration began to form in Aqua’s eyes. She was so close! The Realm of Light was just on the other side of the door. She was a keyblade master; how could she possibly be stymied by a single lock?

Before the frustration could overtake her, she heard a voice speaking in her head. Not the phantom, one that resonated with kindness and strength.

_Don't be afraid. Your heart is the mightiest weapon of all. Remember, you are the one who will open the door to the light._

It seemed the King had left her a final gift, to make sure that if she ever found a door she would be able to open it. Peace filled her, and she stopped struggling against the lock. 

There was no labyrinth.

There was no Veil. 

There was a keyhole, a key, and a key bearer.

Aqua felt, rather than saw, the tip of her keyblade begin to glow. A blue light gathered and shot its way deep into the Veil. It seemed to go on for ages, as if a vast distance had to be traversed. At last, there was a simple click, and the lock gave way. Opening her eyes, Aqua saw a golden radiance expanding from her keyblade and filling the arch.

“I think you might have done it,” Luna said mildly. “I didn’t think the Veil ever gave up those it took, but it seems we will be the first.”

“It’s light…” Aqua stammered. “A door to light.” It warmed a part of her that had forgotten what warmth meant. Her eyes squinted against the unfamiliar glare. She hesitated, not sure if she could truly claim to belong in the light after so long wandering in the dark.

Luna walked up beside her and took her hand. “We’ll go together,” she said without a trace of doubt in her voice.

For the final time, once more hand in hand, the two stepped into the light.


	3. Chapter 3

Aqua and Luna emerged from the Veil in the aftermath of a battle. To one side a man with a pinched face and tattered robes tended to a tall man with wild hair and a well-trimmed beard. Several teenagers with injuries of varying seriousness rested against the dais next to them. A man with a wooden leg and a younger woman with pink hair paced in a circle around the dais.

Aqua noted all this in an instant, but she didn’t drop her guard until she saw Luna lowering her wand. The other girl scanned the room and then focused on the man in the tattered robe.

“Professor Lupin, where’s Harry?”

Lupin, and all the others for that matter, stared at her in disbelief. “You went through the Veil. No one comes back from that. It’s not possible.”

“I found a friend, she helped me.”

Aqua waved to the room. “Hello,” she said.

Luna strode over to Lupin and, from her position on top of the dais, loomed over him. “Where is Harry, Professor?”

“Don’t tell ‘em anything,” growled the man with the wooden leg, thumping toward them. “Last thing Potter needs is some demon from the other side of the Veil wearing Lovegood’s shape. I say we take care of them now before he has to see her.” He raised a gnarled wooden staff and Aqua raised her keyblade in response.

Luna’s attention snapped over to the man and she stalked toward him with a determination Aqua had not previously seen from her, but was utterly unsurprised to find she possessed. Her silver eyes held the man’s gaze, and with a start, Aqua saw an artificial blue eye roll from the back of his head to match Luna’s stare.

There was a moment of frozen silence as the slip of a girl glared down the stolid old fighter. When Luna spoke it came out not as a request or a demand, but a simple statement of fact.

“Professor Moody, you will tell me where Harry Potter is.”

Moody hesitated. At last he closed his eyes and shook his head. “When you went through the Veil he went after Bellatrix. Dumbledore was right behind us so they should have met up by now in the Atrium.”

Luna barely waited to hear the end of Moody’s speech. She hopped down from the dais and was climbing the steps to the exit. Aqua followed close on her heels.

Those gathered were watching with various expressions of confusion. As Aqua strode away, Lupin called after her. “Wait. Who are you?”

“I’m Luna’s friend,” Aqua called back. Before anyone could ask anything else, she and Luna were through the exit and out of sight.

They entered a round room with more than a dozen identical wooden doors. As Aqua entered the room, the door slammed shut behind her, and the walls began to spin. She tensed, but the floor remained stationary and Luna didn’t appear to be concerned.

About the doors anyway. She was hopping from one foot to the other as she impatiently waited for the doors to stop spinning. Aqua came up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, it’s ok. It sounds like he’s alright. And you said this Dumbledore is a strong mage, didn’t you?”

With a clear effort, Luna stopped her nervous fidgeting and nodded. “Yes, if he’s with Dumbledore then he’s probably fine. I can’t help but worry though. I’ll feel better when I see him.”

Just then, the doors stopped spinning. Luna looked up and scanned the doors for a moment. “I’d like the exit, if you please,” she said clearly to thin air.

A door just to their right sprang open. Luna called a thank you back to the room as she and Aqua hurried through it. They entered a long corridor of dark smooth stone, with a wrought iron lift at the end.

“Atrium,” Luna said as they entered it, and the lift took off.

“I take it there’s going to be a fight when we arrive?” Aqua asked.

“Most probably,” Luna confirmed. “Oh, yes. Just so you know, if you see a spell that’s green, you’d better dodge it. There’s no blocking that spell, and I’d hate to lose my new friend so soon.”

“Dodge the green spell,” Aqua repeated. “Got it, thanks.”

“Atrium” a pleasant female voice announced. With keyblade and wand at the ready, they walked out of the lift.

Aqua’s first irreverent thought was that at least it wasn’t hard to tell which was the evil wizard and which was the good. An old man in blue robes reminiscent of Yen Sid was holding back a dark wind with a spell that emitted a small blue light. His opponent was tall and bald, cloaked in black, and the shards of his heart held more darkness than any other Aqua had ever met. Dark threads writhed away from the shards of his heart in his body to other pieces of himself out in the world. It was a new perversion of the darkness and one Aqua found incredibly unsettling.

“Harry!” While Aqua had been observing the battle, Luna had swept the room for the only thing she cared about. She darted forward to the side of the black-haired boy crouching beside a pillar. 

“Run, Miss Lovegood! Take Harry and get back!” the wizard, Dumbledore she realized, called out.

The man in black began to laugh. “You might have protected the boy. But how many innocents can you shield from me? And who will you choose to sacrifice?” With a shout of his own, he split the wave of darkness, sending half of it streaming toward Luna and Harry.

Aqua leaped into the dark spell’s path and raised her guard. With the ease of long practice, translucent purple hexagons snapped into place around her and the dark spell crashed into them. 

It was strong. There was no denying that. Xehanort was stronger, she thought, but this darkness would have overwhelmed her had she faced it back when she’d first become a master. 

That had been a long time ago.

With a contemptuous flick of her keyblade, Aqua slashed through the spell entirely, sending the pale man staggering from the backlash. She walked forward to stand next to Dumbledore. 

“You look like you could use a hand,” she said.

He assessed her briefly, too blue eyes dredging up memories of Ventus, then nodded. “Indeed I could. Thank you for your assistance…”

“Aqua,” she supplied.

“Thank you Aqua.” He turned to regard his opponent. The other man had climbed to his feet but was eyeing her keyblade warily. “Well Tom, it seems you are outnumbered.”

“Not for long,” the man apparently named Tom growled. Quicker than Aqua’s eyes could track his wand shot up and pointed towards her. “Avada Kedavra!”

Reflexively, Aqua raised her barrier once again. As the green light shot from his wand, Aqua recalled Luna’s warning and she abandoned her barrier in favor of dropping to the ground.

It was a good thing she had. The green spell sliced through her barrier without a trace of difficulty, and had she not dodged it would have struck her straight on. Beside her she saw Dumbledore circle his wand once and then raise it sharply.

The ground underneath Tom rose to his waist, pinning him in place. Sensing an opening, Aqua used her low position to find her footing and dashed forward.

Tom’s wand jerked forward and the binding earth shattered. Pieces rocketed towards her, but she was ready. Aqua slashed in front of her as she ran, cutting the earth apart with ease. 

As the last rock broke she saw Tom’s wand pointed at her again. This time a sickly purple and black miasma flowed from it. Before Aqua could block it, a gold tinted wind flowed from behind her. It intercepted the miasma and dissolved it, leaving her a clear shot.

Aqua shouted and raised her keyblade high before bringing it swinging down on Tom. He managed to raise a shield just as she struck, but he clearly didn’t know what a keyblade could do in the hands of a master.

Her keyblade sparked once and passed through Tom’s shield without slowing down. It smashed into the side of his black robe and sent him flying back into the unforgiving stone wall. Aqua followed, intent on not giving him time to cast.

She struck again, a wide slash that hammered into his left shoulder. He twisted away from the blow, and the twisted further, vanishing from the spot. 

Aqua felt, rather than saw, Tom’s darkness coalesce behind her. She ducked low and spun, slashing with the keyblade. The force from his spell singed the top of her head, but she avoided it and her blow struck his legs sending him tumbling backwards.

As her foe fell back, Dumbledore sent a jet of ruby light toward Tom. A silver shield appeared in the path of Dumbledore’s spell, and the light bounced towards Aqua. She caught it with her keyblade and sent it back toward Tom.

He hadn’t counted on her reflecting it as well, and the spell sunk into his skin. Aqua flung her keyblade after it and the blade smashed into his face as only four feet of solid metal could. She summoned it back to her hand and sunk into her fighting pose.

Out of breath, Tom leaned against the wall. A trace of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and the stark red stood out against the pale white of his flat face. He wiped his mouth with his left hand and regarded his blood with surprise.

“What are you?” he asked, fury and curiosity warring in his voice.

There could be only one answer to a question like that. “An enemy,” she said with pride, “to you and everyone like you.”

He laughed. A harsh rustling sound like dry bones rolling in the desert. “I am Lord Voldemort. There are no others like me.”

Memories filled Aqua. Of the great wave of darkness in the Keyblade Graveyard. Of facing endless heartless in the Realm of Darkness. Of facing her own phantom time and time again, a lesser darkness, but a far more personal one.

She shook her head sadly. “You’re not the darkest I’ve fought. You’re not remarkable or special in how far you’ve fallen. There’s no pride to be found in that descent. You’re just another shadow that will vanish when the light comes.”

The fury that contorted his face was pitiable in its intensity. It made clear just how twisted and inhuman he had become. “Then watch as I snuff out the light,” he hissed. Then he turned in place and was gone.

Aqua waited a moment, but when she didn’t feel his darkness returning she allowed herself to straighten and glanced back at Dumbledore. For the first time that battle she saw fear on his face. 

“Dumbledore, is he gone?” she asked, scanning the space once more.

Before he could answer, the boy at Luna’s side – Harry, Aqua reminded herself – let out a scream. He fell to the ground clutching at his forehead. Dumbledore rushed to his side and Aqua was close behind him.

As she neared, she heard a horrible high pitched laugh coming from the boy’s mouth. When he looked up, Aqua saw a glint of hateful red in his eyes.

“You’ve lost, old man,” he spat in Tom’s voice. Another scream ripped its way from his throat as he writhed on the ground.

“Harry,” Dumbledore said urgently, “you are not like him. You chose not to be like him. You must remember that.”

“Can’t you help him, professor?” Luna pleaded. But Dumbledore’s silence and his glassy eyes were answer enough. Luna turned to Aqua. “Can you help him? Heal him like you healed me?” 

Aqua raised her keyblade. “Curaga!” she intoned. The green and yellow flowers appeared above him, and Aqua saw the cuts and bruises on his face and hands disappear. Even as they did so, he let loose another piercing scream.

When Harry raised his head again it was Aqua he glared at. “There will be no prophecy, no chosen light to end me.” And in the face of his malice there was nothing Aqua could think to do. No spell she could cast would hurt the monster more than the boy.

In that moment of desperation and despair, a curious sound was heard. A melody that seemed to cut through all the fears and pain. Even Harry stilled, though he whimpered nonetheless. 

Humming.

Luna was humming.

It was familiar to Aqua, somehow. As if she should have known it, or as if the song was somehow inscribed upon her heart. It was a simple and clean melody, and everyone present suddenly knew exactly what was going to happen.

Luna knelt next to Harry, and gently took him in her arms. Her left hand raised her wand and a pure white light shone from the tip. Aqua felt a tug on her magic, and realized that the girl was using the link they had formed earlier to draw on her magic. She didn’t mind. She had used Luna’s magic when her need was greatest, and it was only fitting that Luna should do the same.

“Please, don’t go,” Luna whispered. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Harry’s. He calmed. Aqua could still see the alien rage flickering red in his eyes, but it was contained. Then, moving gently so as not to jostle Harry, Luna brought her wand forward. She pressed the light at its tip to Harry’s heart.

His eyes closed, and he exhaled as if breathing out would rid him of everything that had ever troubled him. Aqua could sense the darkness flowing away from the boy, and once it was gone she could see the light underneath, strong and pure and buoyed up by Luna’s light. 

He could bear a keyblade, she realized. They both could. The fire in Harry's heart had grown strong from clashing with the dark again and again without giving in, and it was fueled by his connections to others. The connection to Luna blazed brightest of all, and in that moment Aqua saw what it was that drew Luna to the boy.

Beyond the small cluster around Harry, Aqua felt the ousted darkness gathering back into human form. Tom looked even paler and sickly to her eyes. Luna’s magic had not done him any good. Still, he looked as though he was considering renewing his attack, and Aqua readied her keyblade to counter him.

Before the battle could resume the numerous fireplaces that lined the Atrium walls flared with green fire. People began to pour out of the flames and into the long hall of dark stone. They brought brightness, noise, and bustle. All anathema to the dark, and Aqua saw Tom flinch back from them.

“Merlin’s beard!” exclaimed a portly man in a lime green bowler hat. “It’s You Know Who. He’s back. My word – how can this be?”

Tom surveyed the new arrivals, and he must not have liked what he saw. With a final glare at Dumbledore, Aqua, Luna, and Harry he turned in place and was gone. Aqua knew that this time it was for good.

The gathered people continued to gibber and point at where Tom had so recently stood. From their chatter Aqua guessed that the appearance of the dark wizard had been something of a surprise to them. Dumbledore glanced down at Harry and Luna, checking that they were okay, and then he stood and strode off to speak with the man in the bowler hat.

Aqua knelt next to Luna. “So this is the Harry you were so determined to get back to?”

Luna nodded, not relaxing her grip on Harry for an instant. The motion jostled Harry and he opened his eyes to stare at Luna. “Luna you – you saved me. Voldemort was inside me. He was everywhere and I just wanted to die to make it end. But I could feel you nearby, and even though I couldn’t believe that could be the case, I desperately wanted to. He couldn’t bear the feeling you gave to me. Thank you, Luna.”

“You are quite welcome Harry,” Luna said primly.

Harry’s eyes drifted over to Aqua and his brow furrowed in confusion. “You were fighting Voldemort with a sword. Who are you? How did you do that?”

“It’s a key, actually. I’m Aqua, a keyblade master and Luna’s friend. As for how I did that, well,” Aqua sighed as she felt every one of her years weigh on her head, “I’ve been fighting creatures like Tom for a long time.”

Harry blinked, apparently only focusing on part of what she’d said. “Luna’s friend? Are you the reason she came back from the other side of the Veil?”

“It turns out her key works on Veils too,” Luna said. “It’s a useful thing, if I do say so myself.”

“Thank you.” Harry pulled himself into a sitting position so he could face Aqua squarely. “Seriously, thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without Luna.”

“You’d be infested with wrackspurts in a moment, that’s what you’d do,” Luna said firmly.

That startled a laugh out of Harry, and even Aqua felt a smile flicker across her face. It wasn’t hard to feel happy in the face of the sheer relief flowing out of Harry and Luna.

“I am glad to hear you laugh again, Harry,” Dumbledore said. He had finished his business with the others and had returned to their little group. “I must clean up this mess here, but I’d like to send you back to Hogwarts before I do.” Harry opened his mouth, but Dumbledore preempted him. “Yes, your friends below will be taken care of and sent along shortly, and miss Lovegood may accompany you as well. However, I think it is time the two of us had a long overdue conversation.”

“The prophecy-“ Harry began, but Dumbledore cut him off.

“Indeed, my boy. Not here though.” He turned to Aqua. “I would like to extend an invitation for you to go to Hogwarts as well. I would very much like to learn more about your origins and your peculiar wand.”

Aqua caught Luna’s eye and the other girl nodded to her, which satisfied Aqua’s need for caution. “It’s called a keyblade, and I’d be happy to take you up on that offer.”

“Wonderful!” Dumbledore beamed. With a wave of his wand he summoned a piece of debris from the earlier battle. Touching his wand to it he muttered “portus” and the object glowed blue. “If you would please all place a hand on this. I will be seeing you in half an hour.”

Aqua, Luna, and Harry did as they were bid. Aqua could feel the magic fizzling in the object beneath her fingertips, though she could not divine its purpose. As Dumbledore let go of the object, Aqua felt the magic activate. A hook grabbed her somewhere behind the navel and Aqua was whisked away from the scene of her latest battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Luna was humming, of course:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1nDzB1P8GM


	4. Chapter 4

For a moment Aqua thought she’d been transported to Yen Sid’s tower. It had the same feel to it, a crackle of magic that ran through everything in the office right down to the carpeting. There were knick-knacks that covered the desk and the shelving on the walls that emitted soft beeps or strobes of light. On a perch to one side of a venerable desk sat a large bird the color of fire.

“Hullo Fawkes,” Harry said, holding out his left arm to the bird, since Luna was still holding tightly to his right.

The bird hopped over to him, large talons careful not to grip hard enough to hurt. It gave him a once over and was apparently satisfied with what it saw. It took flight, gliding once around Luna before perching directly on top of Aqua’s head.

Aqua stood very still. Sure, those talons were gentle now, but they were very sharp and very close nonetheless. “Luna, should I be worried?”

Luna tilted her head. “Hmm, no I think he goes very nicely with your hair actually.”

Harry, who had already been holding back a smile, gave up and burst into full blown laughter and Luna quickly followed. They ended up leaning on the desk for support, laughing so hard that tears ran down their faces.

Aqua knew enough not to mistake hysterical relief for genuine merriment, but if she’d ever known how to handle that outpouring of emotion a decade in solitude had long since erased that knowledge. Fortunately, the bird perched on her head had a better grasp of human emotions than she did.

Fawkes let out a piercing cry that resonated in the small office and seemed to fill the room. It was startling, though not unpleasantly so, and to Aqua it was reminiscent of the rejuvenating power of a megalixir. 

It had a rather more pronounced effect on Harry and Luna. The laughter slowed and stopped as they too caught their breath and regained a semblance of control. Harry pushed himself off the desk and stood up straight, before stepping forward and wrapping Luna in a tight embrace. From over his shoulder, Aqua could see Luna’s mouth make a comically round O of surprise. After a moment the witch smiled and her arms came up as she returned the hug. 

“I thought I lost you, Luna,” Harry said, and Aqua was beginning to feel a little out of place. “I thought my stupid mistake had gotten you killed, and I never would have been able to forgive myself for that.”

Fawkes cried again. This time was less a passionate call and more a polite chirp to remind Harry that there were other people present. Harry started and let Luna go, to her apparent disappointment.

“Er, right, lost my head there for a moment. Sorry, Luna.”

“That’s quite alright, Harry,” Luna said, but Aqua caught a tinge of pink on her pale cheeks.

Fortunately for Luna’s emotional tranquility, Harry missed it as he turned to Aqua. “I don’t know how you did it,” he said. “But you saved both of our lives tonight. Thank you.” He paused for a moment and chuckled. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever said that before. It’s kind of nice getting saved by someone else for once. Any chance you’ll be around the next time I face off against Voldemort?”

Despite his cheery tone, the sadness lurking in his piercing green eyes cut her to the quick. It was the utter fatalism it displayed, the certain knowledge that, fair or not, he was going to have to face the darkness again and again, and no one would ever save him from it.

_I’m asking you as a friend. Just… put an end to me._

_Aqua… put an end to me_

Other voices echoed in her head. Not phantoms this time, but memories. She’d lost her brothers, had been unable to save Ventus or Terra when the dark came calling. Now here stood another made in their image. Aqua’s gaze drifted over to Luna and she saw in the younger girl’s eyes the mirror of her own past desperation. 

Neither of them could save Harry.

But Aqua could give him a weapon, a chance to face the darkness armed with something a little more formidable than a stick of wood. Both of them, actually, because the dark didn’t have the courtesy to disregard the innocent.

“I don’t know if I’ll be around, but I can give you both a fighting chance. That is, if you accept what I have to offer,” Aqua said.

Uncertain, Harry glanced over at Luna. Luna tilted her head and tapped her mouth thoughtfully. “I trust you, Aqua,” she said at last.

Harry smiled. “Good enough for me. I accept.”

Aqua raised her keyblade – she still had not let it go, was not sure her hand even remembered what it was like not to bear its weight - and spun it in her hand until she was gripping the blade with the handle held out towards Harry and Luna. When she spoke there was a resonance to her words, a deepness as if they were being spoken by thousands of others stretching back in an unbroken chain to the time before the worlds were sundered.

_In your hand take this key._

_So long as you have the makings,_

_then through this simple act of taking,_

_its wielder you will one day be._

_And you will find me, friend_

_– no ocean will contain you then._

_No more borders around, or below, or above,_

_so long as you champion the ones you love._

Hesitantly, Harry and Luna reached out together and grasped the hilt of her keyblade. For a moment, Aqua had a curious case of double vision. Though she held only one keyblade, she saw two. Master’s Defender which she had inherited from her master in Harry’s hand, and her own Rainfell in Luna’s.

A moment of calm rippled across the room, as if reality itself was leaning in to watch the pattern shift from what it had been to what it could be. A ring of light expanded from the keyblade’s hilt, and Aqua knew it was done. They were keyblade wielders now, for better or worse. 

Too late, she remembered the legends that keyblade wielders had brought ruin to the worlds they visited. Perhaps, by introducing keyblades where none had existed before she had doomed this world to ruin.

Fawkes cried again from his position atop her head, and his cry prompted her to look again at Harry and Luna. She saw again in them the strength of character that had prompted her act in the first place. There were no guarantees in life, any choice could lead to despair, but this was as wise a choice as could be made.

Sensing the ceremony was done, Harry and Luna slowly pulled their hands back. “I can feel it,” Luna said in wonderment. “Like the moon was a bird that laid another egg in my soul. And if I asked it to hatch…” She held out her hand expectantly, and with a flash of light a keyblade appeared.

It was silver with purple accents. Complicated scrollwork, almost like foliage, spread across the hilt and crept up onto the blade. The blade itself twisted and turned so that it was impossible to tell if there was one central column, or two, or three, or perhaps none at all somehow. Aqua had once seen an image of two hands drawing one another, and Luna’s keyblade reminded her of that. At the end of the keychain was a full moon and the stylized image of a woman’s face.

Luna smiled wide and swung it on a looping path through the air, leaving glowing lines of moonlight where it passed. She giggled and spun, the keyblade’s path growing wilder and wilder. 

“Wow,” Harry whispered, and Aqua had a hunch he wasn’t looking just at the keyblade.

Before she could pursue that line of thought further, Luna’s wild swinging came perilously close to Aqua’s head and Fawkes perch. She raised her own keyblade and blocked the errant swing with a clang. 

“Oh no,” Luna’s eyes widened. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I got a bit carried away.”

Aqua smiled. “It’s fine. I remember when Terra first managed to summon his keyblade. He was so excited he accidentally put a hole in the stained glass window in the main hall. The Master forbade him from summoning it again until the window was repaired.”

“Still, I think I’d best put it away for just now. I’m sure Professor Dumbledore would be displeased if I broke his snorkack detector, or anything else in here for that matter.”

Fawkes cawed in agreement. With a wistful sigh, Luna let the keyblade drop from her hand and disappear.

Aqua turned to Harry. “Your turn. Summon your keyblade.”

“Er. How do I do that?” Harry asked.

“How?” Aqua repeated. “You reach for it. If you are the type of person I think you are, then it should feel natural, no different than moving one of your limbs.”

Harry held out his arm and waved it around a bit, but no keyblade appeared. “Sorry, I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong,” he said, frustration evident in his tone.

“It’s a little like the Patronus Charm,” said Luna suddenly. “You need to feel a certain way to bring it out. Except it’s not a happy memory you need. It’s more like… Hmm.” Her voice trailed away and her gaze wandered off to a corner of the room.

Fawkes gave voice to a full throated battle caw, one to stir to courage even the faintest of hearts. Luna nodded firmly. “Yes, it’s exactly like that. You need to feel like Fawkes’ caw just felt. The emotion that made you lead us all to the ministry to save Stubby Boardman”

Harry had been nodding along until Luna got to the name, at which point he promptly choked. “What did you just call him?”

“Stubby Boardman,” Luna replied innocently. “When Aqua and I left the Veil I recognized him from his picture in the papers. And from the Quibbler article, of course. I didn’t think you would have leaped to the rescue like that for Professor Lupin or Professor Moody. I think it’s great that you’re really passionate about his music.”

“He’s actually my godfather,” Harry said, trying very hard to suppress his laughter.

“Really?” Luna asked, delighted. “Can you introduce me sometime? I have so many questions for him about the Rotfang conspiracy. That’s why he ended up in Azkaban after all. He knew too much after playing a ministry gig and they had to silence him.”

“You can meet him on one condition. No matter what he says, you have to keep referring to him as Stubby Boardman.”

“That’s his name,” Luna said, once more the very picture of innocence. “Now, why don’t you give that keyblade another try? Remember the feeling of going to save Stubby. If there’s any truth in the school grapevine you’ve done that more than once.”

Harry nodded. He was looser now, Aqua noticed. Not as tensed and forceful in trying to pull the keyblade into existence. Luna’s little digression seemed to have calmed him down. She watched as his eyes absently roamed the office.

Finally, they alighted on the silver sword with a ruby pommel resting in a case behind Dumbledore’s desk. “A saving-people thing, is it?” Harry murmured to himself. He clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “Right then, let’s do this.”

Green eyes flashed with the determination Aqua had sensed in him, sensed in this boy who had clashed with that fearsome darkness in Tom and come away battered and bruised, but all the brighter for it. An answering flash lit the room and Harry Potter held his keyblade.

Where Luna’s had been silver and subtlety, Harry’s was flame and brashness. Red and gold dominated the long straight blade, and the keychain was a dark green lightning bolt, shaped just like the scar on Harry’s forehead. The keyblade fanned out towards the tip, rather like the feathers of a bird’s tail. In fact, rather like a specific bird’s tail. 

Fawkes finally left his perch on top of Aqua’s head and alighted on the tip of the Keyblade as Harry held it up. His tail was a perfect inversion of the fiery fan that capped the keyblade. Harry smiled. “You’re in my wand Fawkes, so it’s only fitting you be in my keyblade as well.” Fawkes nodded in satisfaction then hopped over to his perch beside Dumbledore’s desk.

Harry swung the keyblade around a few times, leaving burning ribbons lingering in the air. “It feels good,” he said. “Something about having a keyblade in my hand feels right. The only challenge will be figuring out whether to use this or my wand in my right hand.”

“Maybe you don’t have to,” Luna said. She pointed toward a shallow groove in the first eleven inches of the blade. “Mine has that too, and I can’t help but wonder.” She summoned her keyblade back in a flash of silver light. Taking her wand in her right hand, Luna gently pressed the wood against the groove in her keyblade. There was a click, and the wand snapped into place. Harry quickly followed suit, pressing his phoenix and holly wand into the fiery keyblade.

“Interesting,” Aqua said. “When I linked with Luna I could use your type of magic with just my keyblade. Perhaps the wand is still required because that was your primary form of magic. Well go on, try it out.”

Harry looked around the office again and settled on a tattered old hat resting on a shelf. He pointed his keyblade at the hat and flicked it slightly. “Wingardium leviosa.” All three of them watched as the hat rose steadily into the air. Harry held the spell for a moment and then let the hat settle back down.

“That’s that then,” he said. “We can use our keyblades and magic at the same time. This oughta give Voldemort a shock the next time we meet. Thank you Aqua. I only wish there was some way we could repay you.”

“If it helps against the darkness, then I don’t need any repayment,” Aqua said firmly. “Just don’t give in. I’ve seen too many people – people like you – lose their fight and become something terrible. I’ve come close to it myself more than once.”

“Maybe there is something we can give you, then,” Luna said. The other two looked at her, then followed her gaze to the hat that Harry had levitated.

“The Sorting Hat?” Harry asked, confusion evident in his tone. “What would that do?”

Luna turned to face Aqua. “The Sorting Hat looks inside you and can tell what’s there, even if you don’t always know yourself.” 

“Yeah,” agreed Harry. “Come to think of it, I’ve asked it to double check what was inside me, back in my second year when everyone thought I was attacking other students. It reassured me then, a little at least.”

Aqua could hear the subtext in Luna’s words loud and clear, and she was grateful to Luna for not saying it explicitly. The hat could tell her if the darkness had taken hold somewhere deep in her heart, if the Realm of Darkness had left an indelible stain on her. If it hadn’t, such knowledge would be a priceless boon, but if it had…

No. She wanted to know. Even if the darkness had snuck in, not knowing would just prevent her from making anything better. “I would like to try it.”

Luna nodded. She took the Sorting Hat from the shelf with both hands. Aqua took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the Headmaster’s desk. Luna walked to stand behind her and lowered the hat onto her head, where it slipped over her eyes.

“Hmm, you’re no ordinary wizard,” said a small voice in her ear. “I see what you are hoping for here. It is true I can see into heart, but I cannot tell you what I see, not directly. I am the Sorting Hat, and all I can do is sort you. Still, I think your friends can help you interpret what I say. If you would rather not, you may remove me from your head now.”

“No?”

“Very well. Then I shall sort away. Hmm, an uncommon amount of courage. You’ve faced far more than the eleven-year-olds I usually sort, and you’ve faced it with a dignity many never manage to find. Yet that was something forced upon you, not something you chose. You’re clever as well. I see long sunlit days studying the arcane arts without a care in the world. But that’s not quite it either. I see something else deep at the core of your being. Yes, that’s it. The very thing that defines your nature, and now that I see it I can’t imagine how it could have been anything else. Better be –

HUFFLEPUFF!”

Aqua ripped the hat off her head and turned to Luna and Harry. “What is that?” She demanded, “What does it mean?”

Harry choked and looked as though he was desperately trying not to laugh. “Well I never would have expected that.”

“Hufflepuff is the house of loyalty to friends and hard work,” Luna said in answer to Aqua’s question. “Considering how quick you were to help me, and how you pushed your way back through the Veil I think it’s well deserved.”

“Indeed. I think Hufflepuff house would be proud to have such a member.” The three of them turned to the doorway as Dumbledore swept into the office. “Incidentally, they are very few members of Hufflepuff house that have fallen to the darkness. None, in the recent war,” he added, peering at Aqua from over his half-moon spectacles.

As Aqua met Dumbledore’s eyes she felt a very curious sensation. Her time spent in close proximity to darkness had made her sensitive to when outside influences sought to affect her mind. This was not so unsubtle as darkness, but she felt a distant flicker of something as if someone was peering through stained glass into her mind. The second she focused on it, Dumbledore blinked and it was gone. 

“Welcome back, Professor,” Harry said, drawing their attention. “Is the Prime Minister going to stop being a bloody moron?”

“Language, Harry,” Dumbledore gently chided. “But yet, I dare say there will be no more pointed comments about our sanity, or lack thereof, in _The Daily Prophet_ in the weeks to come.” Dumbledore frowned at Harry. “Despite this fortuitous outcome, I hope you realize just how poorly your rescue attempt could have gone.”

“I do.” Harry looked over at Luna and then took her hand. “Believe me, professor, I thought I’d caused the death of someone I care very deeply for, and I won’t forget that feeling any time soon.”

“I’m glad you could learn that lesson without an irrevocable loss. And your actions led to Voldemort’s reveal, so I will say no more about it.” Dumbledore scanned his office and tapped his chin thoughtfully. “We do have much to speak of, my boy, but first we owe our guest some courtesy.” He turned to Aqua. “Thank you for the assistance you rendered to us back in the ministry and for your gifts to young Harry and Luna just now.”

“How did you know about the keyblades she just gave us?” Harry asked.

Dumbledore ambled around behind his desk and tapped a bulbous silver object that occasionally emitted small square clouds of purple smoke. “This lets me see what happens in my office even when I’m not here.”

Luna’s eyes grew wide. “That explains so much.”

“Does it though?” Harry asked wrly. 

“Anyway,” Aqua broke in, having learned her lesson about Luna’s admittedly charming tangents, “creatures like Tom – or Voldemort? – are my enemy wherever I find myself, so I was glad to help. As for the keyblades, they go only to people with the right kind of heart. I just gave these two the chance to meet that standard.”

“Regardless, we are in your debt.” Dumbledore peered at her over his half-moon spectacles. “That is why it pains me to ask more of you. Yet I don’t understand the extent of your abilities, and so I must take this chance. Could you put an end to Voldemort permanently?”

Aqua cast her mind back on the battle for a moment, before shaking her head. “With your help I might be able to beat him. But he had these dark threads coming out of his heart and without breaking those I think whatever they’re tied to would just keep bringing him back.”

Dumbledore leaned forward, eyes flashing intently. “How many threads were there?”

“Six. My scan spell cued in on them so I made sure to remember it.”

“So many,” Dumbledore whispered and he looked terribly old as he sat back behind his desk.

“Professor, are you alright? What are those threads anyway?” Harry asked.

With the help of a small cry from Fawkes, Dumbledore visibly rallied himself at the question from his student. “I will tell you in due time. For now, knowing the number is enough. It seems I am in your debt once again, Aqua.”

“Then I’d like to ask a question. Have you ever met anyone else with a keyblade? Anyone with powers like mine? Or have you heard of anyone like me?” Aqua asked in hopes of getting a sense of just how far she was from any of the worlds she knew. If at least legends of the keyblade had made it to this world, then she should be able to find her way home on her glider. Admittedly, she didn’t have her armor, but she was fairly confident that if she could hold on through a decade in the Realm of Darkness, a trip through the Lanes Between shouldn’t pose an excessive risk.

“I have not,” Dumbledore said, looking troubled. “There are a handful of old stories that could be stretched to refer to you, but nothing concrete.”

Aqua hummed thoughtfully. “Does the name Xehanort mean anything to you? Or Yen Sid? Mickey?”

“Mickey Mouse?” Harry asked. “No, sorry, that was stupid.”

“He is a mouse,” Aqua said slowly. “Short, round ears, talks kind of like ‘gosh, you all did great’,” she said in her best imitation of Mickey.

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Harry said. “But he’s a fictional character in children’s stories here.”

“Yen Sid is Disney backwards,” Luna interjected suddenly. 

“Walt Disney was the man who created the character Mickey Mouse,” Harry explained. “If they’re real people to you, then you’re from very far away.”

“You’ve heard of them, though,” Aqua said. “That’ll give me a path to follow. So long as their hearts have touched even this distant place, I can follow the connections back home.”

“I am glad you have discovered that,” Dumbledore said. “However, it does raise a new difficulty. If keyblades are from so far away, then procuring an instructor for Harry and Luna would present something of a problem. Would you consider staying on as a tutor for them, at least for a short time? This is a school of magic after all, and could happily accommodate you.”

Aqua hesitated. The prospect of actual food, a real shower, and a soft bed was viscerally tempting. It had been so long she honestly wasn’t sure she remembered what it felt like to be clean and well fed, and she desperately wanted to find out. However, her worlds had been in terrible danger when she fell to darkness. Even after what DiZ had told her about the worlds’ new keyblade wielders, she still felt a fierce sense of urgency calling her home. And the new keyblade wielders themselves raised another point.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said. “My generation of keyblade wielders was... ill-fated. I was lost to darkness for ten years. My younger brother had his heart rent and was lost to a protective slumber. My older brother was possessed by darkness. I have heard that those who came after did far better and they were almost entirely self-taught. I am wary of passing the fate of my generation on to Luna or Harry.”

She smiled suddenly, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It was a deliberate smile, but no less honest for that. “Besides, the keyblade follows the heart, and I trust their hearts.”

Dumbledore bowed his head. “I can’t argue with that. I will impose on you no longer. You’re free to stay as long as you like in the castle, but I must ask for some privacy now. Harry and I have much to discuss. That goes for you as well, miss Lovegood.”

Harry looked nervous at the coming conversation, but he and Luna shared a wordless look and she hugged him tightly before leaving.

Aqua delayed only a moment longer. “I will return if I can, and if my home is safe, but I can’t say when that will be. I only wish there was more that I could offer you.”

Harry gave a wry grin. “It sounds like you’ve got your own Voldemort to worry about. Thank you for all you’ve done. Especially saving Luna.”

“We saved each other,” Aqua said with a smile, “and I was glad to do it.” She turned to go, then paused one last time in the doorway. “May your heart be your guiding key,” she said to the young hero, and she saw in his eyes that he knew what it meant. Then she slipped through the door, and was gone.

***

The hot shower felt so good that, had her name not already been what it was, Aqua would have felt tempted to change her name to ‘water’ to show the depth of her appreciation. When she finally emerged she found her outfit had been washed, dried, and was pleasantly warm and soft on her fresh-scrubbed skin. Luna had kindly waited for her to finish and informed her that the laundry service was courtesy of helpful beings called ‘house-elves’.

This proved true moments later when Luna led her to the kitchens for her first meal in forever. The house-elves there were only too happy to cook her up a feast fit for a king, and Aqua was happy to indulge. Unfortunately, she found herself so unused to eating that she could only stomach the smallest and blandest of the dishes before her. Luna, for her part, nibbled around the edges of the feast’s tastiest treats. When they were both full there was still an absurd amount of food left over.

“I apologize for not eating more,” Aqua said to the house-elves when she had finished. “It all looks delicious, but it’s just too much for me.” Luna added her apologies to Aqua’s and the house-elves cheerfully waved them off. Once they’d left the kitchen, Luna turned to Aqua.

“Now where to next? Our library is a wonderful resource to learn more about our world, other than the very most interesting creatures, but I can tell you about those anyway. Or we could head off to find you a bed if you want.”

It was tempting and frightening all at once. Frightening because there was some part of Aqua that was sure, deep down, that she had never left the Realm of Darkness. Some part was sure that, if she ever stopped, she’d wake to find herself lying on the cold ground of that terrible place. 

On the other hand, another part of her was sure she was out and was terrified by the thought of ever facing darkness again, in any capacity. It was tempting to imagine just giving up. Dumbledore wouldn’t force her to fight. She could stay at Hogwarts, teach Harry and Luna as best she could, and try and remember what a life outside battle was like.

Slowly, Aqua looked down at her keyblade. She hadn’t been able to make herself let it go. Washing with it in hand had been awkward and eating left handed had been a challenge, but not as hard as lowering defenses bricked with the hordes of heartless she’d slain and mortared with her own blood. To sleep in the castle would mean letting go, and she wasn’t sure she was capable of that.

Aqua raised her eyes to meet Luna’s too-knowing gaze. “I should go. It’s a long way home and my friends need me.”

“And you don’t want to let it go.” It wasn’t a question, not the way Luna said it.

“And I can’t let it go,” Aqua corrected.

Luna summoned her own keyblade and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that as she peered at it. “It tugs on you. Not in an evil way, but like a phoenix. Pulling you toward using it in the service of something grand. Until it’s hard to say who is wielding whom.” She lowered her gaze and met Aqua’s eyes as she idly swished the keyblade through the air. “I think I’ve lost something in gaining this. A chance at peace maybe, at being normal, or as normal as I ever could have been. Harry won’t notice, of course. He has that same drive within him, but I could have been just me. Now I have to be something else, something greater and more terrible.”

“I’m sorry,” Aqua whispered. It seemed terribly inadequate, but it was all she had to offer.

“Don’t be,” Luna said, shaking her head. “It’s not bad being pushed to be more. But losing track of what it means to be just human, that does seem a shame.” She cocked her head. “I’ll let you leave, but only if you dismiss your keyblade first. Take that first step away from being a blade and toward being a person again.”

Playing for time, Aqua took a step back and looked around. They stood in a simple stone corridor. Warm torchlight lit each nook and cranny, leaving abnormally few shadows on the ground. Windows – wide enough to give views of the starry night outside, small enough to not leave her feeling exposed – dotted the walls. A few paintings were scattered on the opposite wall, peaceful mountain scenes that reminded her of her childhood in the Land of Departure. There was no danger here, no reason to keep her keyblade out.

She looked back to Luna, taking in the silly plum earrings she had donned, the mismatched socks and tattered robes she didn’t seem to notice, and the messy dirty-blonde hair she hadn’t bothered to comb. She saw, too, the silver eyes that seemed even here to sparkle with a light all their own. Luna had saved her before, had shown her the path out of the Realm of Darkness, and all Aqua could think was that the other girl wanted to make sure she finished the job.

Aqua wanted to let go, she truly did. It was just so hard. It had been so long she wasn’t sure she even remembered how.

Perhaps Luna saw that need in her face because she stepped forward and hugged Aqua tightly. “I want you to hug me goodbye with both arms,” she whispered.

Some part of Aqua scoffed at the sentiment, but her arms were already moving by reflex. They came up around the smaller girl, and as they did so she just let go. With a soft chime and a river of sparkles Master Defender faded from view for the first time in a decade. As if seeking a replacement, her hands grasped Luna tightly.

“Thank you,” Aqua murmured.

It wasn’t over, of course. Aqua could still feel her keyblade waiting on a hair-trigger to return, and she knew she’d need it before too long. Her right hand also refused to fully straighten without pain, used as it was to clenching around a hilt. But it was a beginning, a first step on a very long road.

At last the two broke apart. Luna smiled. “You had the worst infestation of nargles I’d ever seen. I couldn’t let you go off carrying all of them.”

“So you’ll let me go now?”

Luna nodded. “I wish you’d stay for a while at least, but I understand why you need to go. Come on then, I’ll take you to the entrance.”

They walked through old stone corridors. Up staircases and down again, through twists and turns that somehow seemed to lead straight. Aqua found herself very glad of her guide. They chatted as they walked. Small things, inconsequential in the greater scheme, but needed to build that small moment of peace.

“You’ve done this before,” Luna commented during a lull in the conversation. “A last conversation and a long good-bye,” she clarified, in response to Aqua’s confused look.

“More than once,” Aqua acknowledged. “It doesn’t get any easier, leaving friends behind.”

“Good-byes never are,” Luna agreed as they came to a wide entrance hall with a study wood and iron door at the far end. “Will we ever see you again?”

“Yes,” Aqua answered unequivocally. “I usually can’t say that so firmly, but you have a keyblade, and they have a way of drawing their bearers where they need to be.”

Luna raised hers with a wondering look. “That’s right, I could just follow you right away.”

“Please don’t. Traveling with a keyblade presents its own risks. Emergencies happen, so I won’t tell you never to do it, but I’d prefer you wait until I come back with the right equipment to teach you how to travel between worlds safely.”

“I couldn’t anyway. Harry’s still needed here, and I won’t leave him to face Voldemort alone.” Determination filled Luna’s face. “Once he’s taken care of though, and we’re ready to go traveling...”

Aqua smiled. “’Then you will find me, friend’” she recited.

“Friend,” Luna agreed. “Until then.” They hugged, one last time, and then it was time to go.

Aqua walked through the large door to Hogwarts out into a small courtyard surprisingly similar to the one from which she’d departed her home so very long ago. Luna followed, watching with a smile. Aqua felt for the connection to the lanes between, focusing on thoughts of Mickey and Yen Sid, trying to use that to find the pathway she needed. 

It didn’t take long to hit upon something. It wasn’t a certain route, but it was a lead and it steered well clear of the Realm of Darkness. That was good enough. With a shout, Aqua threw her keyblade into the air and jumped aboard her glider as it came down. She darted into the opening portal and left Hogwarts behind her.

Master Aqua had faced a long journey through the dark. She had survived Xehanort and dueled Voldemort to a draw. Now, at long last, she was flying under her own power back to the Realm of Light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story! The sequel will begin posting next week.


End file.
